


your lights are red (but i'm green to go).

by katarama



Series: leave this blue neighborhood. [15]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Frame - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a boy who skated like most people walk, who saw the ice as a second home.  He played fast and smart and hard.  He smiled when he scored, his grin blinding but fleeting, the boy already looking for the next shot.  He scored a lot.  He smiled a lot.Sometimes he smiled at Kent, too.





	your lights are red (but i'm green to go).

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  **If you're new to this series, start[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10586022).**

**January 2018**

 

 

 

Once upon a time, there was a boy with cool blue eyes and soft, round cheeks that pinked up in the cold.  His hair was dark brown and floppy, and the edges of his otherwise straight hair always curled in on themselves, especially around his forehead.  He was big, tall for his age and chubby, but his shoulders always hunched in on themselves when he sat by himself, his face trained on the ground.

He was one of the most attractive people Kent had ever seen.  He was also probably the loneliest.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who skated like most people walk, who saw the ice as a second home.  He played fast and smart and hard.  He smiled when he scored, his grin blinding but fleeting, the boy already looking for the next shot.  He scored a lot.  He smiled a lot.  

Sometimes he smiled at Kent, too.  They scored a lot together. The boy scored more with Kent at his side, and that made something warm bloom in Kent’s chest.  Taking on the world together, one shot at a time.  One puck in the net at a time.  

When they were off the ice, he smiled at Kent, too.  Those smiles were quieter, less frequent.  More private.  Kent liked those smiles a lot, too.  Kent probably liked those smiles even more.  Kent keeps a chronicle of each one written deep in his chest, each abrupt loud laugh he dragged out of the boy, each fit of giggles the boy let himself have.  Each shy smile caused by Kent’s shoulder knocking his, or by Kent’s hand in his, or by Kent’s hands under his shirt.

Once upon a time, there was a boy whose father was the king, and whose mother was the queen.  The boy was a prince of a kingdom he had dreamed his whole life of inheriting.  He had never been forced into it, not explicitly.  He had never been told to his face that he wasn’t good enough.  The king and queen were kind and loving.  But the boy was aware that it wasn’t just the expectations of his parents he was carrying on his shoulders, but those of all the kingdom’s subjects, everyone who had watched his father’s rise and who wanted him to fail.  

The boy wasn’t born skating like walking.  The boy worked and worked and worked and worked until the ice was all he knew, the ice under his feet and the ice in his lungs, the crystallization of the fear and anxiety and pressure that had made their home in his chest, that stung and scratched with every breath.  The other boys didn’t understand.  The other boys weren’t very nice.  Neither was the press.  The kingdom was holding its breath, waiting for the boy to fall short, waiting for any misstep the boy made.

Skating alone wasn’t enough to thaw the ice, so the boy turned to a magic potion.  It was prescribed.  It made things better, for a while.  It made things better until better became not good enough, because the boy never felt good enough.

Nothing Kent could ever do would make the boy feel like enough, either.  Kent didn’t realize that at the time.  At the time, Kent tried and tried and tried, jokingly and also in earnest.  In the quiet scary moments when the prince was close to giving up, to collapsing under the weight of all the expectations, Kent tried to prop him up.  Kent liked feeling like the center of the boy’s world.  Kent tried every single thing he could think of, made sure the boy was taking his potions and made sure the boy had a confidant.  Tried to help the boy tune out his naysayers.  Loved the boy, with everything he had in him, as if that could be a panacea more powerful than any potion.

But Kent knows now that in this story, there is no saving kiss or true power of love.  And while the boy was a prince, Kent was never a knight.  Kent wasn’t built for slaying dragons and saving the day.  Kent was never made to be the hero in this story.  Kent was just a boy.  A boy who loved another boy.  A boy who loved a prince.  A boy who didn’t know how to stop loving a prince.

There aren’t any fairy tales Kent knows about boys sweeping princes off their feet and riding off into the sunset.  Kent thought he could write one through sheer force of will.  This time, Kent was wrong.

Once upon a time, there were two boys.  One was a prince who had ice in his eyes and in his lungs.  The other was Kent.  Kent had a mouth made of fire, had heat in his hands.  He thought words could thaw the ice and save the day.  For a while, it looked like it might be working.  But the ice was too thick.  And some days, the ice was too cold and sharp.  Some days the fire melted pieces of the ice, left the prince warm and bright, his cheeks still rosy and flushed in a way that made Kent want to kiss him until their lips were puffy and sore.  

But the prince was young and tired and so, so cold.  He approached his coronation and the crowds drew closer and the voices drew louder and he took more and more magic potion, and Kent couldn’t save him.  Kent thought it was his fault.  Kent demanded an audience with the king and queen.  Kent rode his horse across the land to find the prince.  He wanted to help, wanted to love the prince.  He always wanted to love the prince.

But ice was never the only sharpness in the prince.

And then the sparks from Kent’s mouth burned flesh instead of ice.

Once upon a time, there was a boy.  

The boy was not a prince.  The boy was a normal person.  A kid.  A kid who was trying to do his best.  A kid who was too young to know how to shoulder the expectations of a nation.  Of his parents.  Of his parents’ friends.  Of his own friends.  A kid who was sick and who was tired and who was lost.  He made an unhealthy decision.  He made a lot of unhealthy decisions.  What he was facing was scary.  It was hard to make healthy decisions with this sickness filling up his head, especially for a kid.  But the unhealthy decisions were not good for him, and the consequences were even worse.  No one could save him, and asking for help felt impossible.  The boy lost his dream.  It had to be put on hold.  

The boy, now a man, tried to piece himself together.  The man looked at his life and his choices to try to see where he could make healthier ones.  The man cut a lot of ties with people who were there when things were at their worst.  The man cut his ties with Kent.  And as much as Kent never seemed to want to accept it, as unfair as it was, as desperate as Kent was for an explanation, for a second chance, that decision was the man’s to make.  

Once upon a time, Kent loved that boy.

He’d never loved a boy that much, and he’s never loved a boy that much since.  Not romantically.  He still loves, still forms connections, connections that get him through the day, when he’s at his sickest.  The guys on his team.  His cat.  Troy.  His mom, even.  He shouldn’t say he loves his therapist, probably, or the regulars in group therapy, and a lot of days he mostly kind of hates them.  But in a loving kind of way, where he tries to remember that they’re helping him.  

He tried to turn his romantic love into fairy tales.  He tried to turn his love into a magic potion.  He tried to use it to write a second chapter, a third chapter, that would fix the first one.  That would keep him in the boy’s life.  The man’s life.  He catches himself, sometimes, talking to his therapist in those kinds of fairy tales.  Trying to break down the story in a way that helps him remove himself from it.  Trying to break down the story in a way that gives him the right to go storming up to the highest tower of the castle and demanding entrance to save the prince.

But Jack Zimmermann was never a prince.  Jack was never anything more or less than a boy.  Jack isn’t anything more or less than a man.  Jack isn’t the black and white thinking that Kent falls into.  

He was never always pink, rosy cheeks and sweet kisses and idealized visions of romance that are so easy for Kent to conjure up.  He was never a damsel in distress.  He was never perfect, or made just for Kent.  He was a hockey boy with anxiety and a bad 90′s boy band haircut.  He was disarmingly funny in some moments and painfully awkward in others.  He only asked for what he needed during sex, when Kent forced the point, which made for great sex but some terrible miscommunication the rest of the time.  Kent got Jack better than most people, but that doesn’t mean that Kent ever really understood Jack.  That doesn’t mean Kent ever had any right to Jack’s time or Jack’s love or Jack’s attention.  That doesn’t make Jack his.

Jack also isn’t the dragon that Kent turned him into in his head, abruptly and intensely and sporadically, for years after the draft.  At first because Jack just disappeared.  No warning, no notice.  No returned calls or texts.  The space just made Kent mad, made it easier for Kent to pick out every single flaw he’d ever noticed in Jack but didn’t voice at the time.  It got worse after the first visit to Samwell, when Kent was up in a bad impulsive high after winning the Stanley Cup, when he made excuses to head to Boston and get a car down to Samwell before he could think twice.  Before anyone could tell him it was a bad idea to his face.

He showed up with the mindset that he would find a Jack who would be grateful to see him, who would pull Kent close and ask how he was doing and talk about old times.  Instead, he found a Jack who was angry and hard, a Jack who was jealous.  A Jack who turned Kent away.  And then, after that, Kent turned even more sour.  Jack was unreasonable, mean, jealous, bitter.  Wishing he hadn’t fucked up, so he could be where Kent was instead of wasting away his best years on a no-name team playing college hockey.

And then there was the second visit, when Kent should’ve learned better but didn’t, when Kent thought he could fix the bitterness by providing a solution, by giving Jack an out.  After that, Jack became a coward.  Jack was afraid of what he wanted.  Jack was too chickenshit to even admit that he wanted to be with Kent, wanted to play with Kent, wanted to ditch all that college hockey bullshit and go back to the original plan, tearing it up in the NHL together.

But it was also Kent that was the worst.  It was both terrible options at once, that Kent was a fuck-up and that Jack was too, that Kent should’ve been better and that Jack shouldn’t have hurt Kent, that Jack should’ve wanted him more, that Jack should’ve wanted what Kent wanted, and that there was never any hope for either of them.  

Kent would just keep wanting, would stretch his feelings out way past their due date, past when he could even reasonably claim to know who Jack was anymore.  Kent would have these wild thoughts that resonated in his core, these grand delusions about changing every single piece of himself to make himself fit into some sort of acceptable box, this fictional image of a boy Jack would want.  Kent would never live up to it.  Even Jack couldn’t live up to Jack’s expectations, Kent had no fucking chance at all.  

But Kent replayed the things he said to Jack in his head and knew that, that time, he fucked it up.  It wasn’t about being perfect or meeting Jack’s expectations.  Painting it that way would be confusing the issue, making excuses for himself.  The second visit, it was his fault.

That time, he decided, would have to be the last time.  Because he could want and want and want, but wanting and wishing wouldn’t change anything.  It wouldn’t change Jack’s mind.  Kent made his choice.  Maybe someday he’d learn to move on from it.  Or to live with it, without it eating away at his chest like termites at rotting wood.

But at the end of the day, he could make his own choices, but he couldn’t make Jack’s for him.

Once upon a time, Kent thought he had made peace with it all, finally.  As much as he was ever going to.  Kent thought that he had settled down.  Kent thought he’d finally come to terms with the fact that Jack was a whole person, instead of a collection of his best moments or a collection of his worst ones.  He was both, at once.  And he was every single day in between, the boring days when they sat around and did homework on a bus or played hockey or lived their lives with only a single text exchanged, or two.  

Kent finally felt like he had settled down to a situation where he was successfully channeling the reckless impulses bubbling up in his chest when he saw Jack into hockey, instead of into all the things he still somehow fucking wanted.  

But now, Kent sees Jack at a club, out with his teammates.  Kent sees Jack at a club and he goes up to him.  Kent is still nervous as shit.  Kent is still pretty sure that this is a terrible idea.  Kent still has all these feelings that he doesn’t know what to do with.  Kent still has all these things that he Wants.  He worries he may not actually be as reasonable or settled as he thought he was, now that he is faced with Jack Zimmermann in the flesh.

But this time, there is no once upon a time.  This time, there is no fairy tale.  Kent is checking himself as best he can.  He has tools that he didn’t when he went to Samwell the first time, has tools that he didn’t have as much practice using (and didn’t really want to use) when he went to Samwell the second time.  He wants to talk without any casualties.  He wants to talk without dragons and princes and magic potions and ice and fire.  

Just a man and another man who have a complicated history that neither of them has ever truly gotten away from. 

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com).


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